Understanding subscriber attribution from your website

Your website analytics tell you where people are coming from, but that's only half the story. This article picks up right where that leaves off: how a visit turns into a subscriber profile once someone signs up, and where you can go to see that attribution data for yourself.

When a visitor lands on your beehiiv website with UTM parameters in the URL (for example, from a marketing campaign), those parameters are tracked during their visit. If they sign up through a subscribe form on your site, beehiiv automatically captures and stores:

• utm_source: Where the traffic came from (for example, Facebook, Google, or a specific partner site)
• utm_medium: How they got there (for example, email, cpc, social)
• utm_campaign: The campaign name you set
• utm_term: The keyword or search term (if provided)
• utm_content: Content identifier (if provided)

This is the inbound counterpart to beehiiv's outbound UTM tagging (the parameters beehiiv automatically adds to your newsletter links). See Using UTM parameter tracking with beehiiv for how that side works.

Once captured, acquisition data surfaces in several places:

• Individual subscriber profiles: Click on any subscriber's name under Subscribers to view their Acquisition Details, including source, medium, campaign, referrer, and channel.
• Subscribers Report: Filter and analyze subscriber growth by Channel, Source, Medium, and UTM Campaign in the Performance by Source table. See Understanding your Subscribers Report for details.
• Segments: Build dynamic segments using Acquisition/UTM Source, Acquisition/UTM Medium, Acquisition/UTM Campaign, Acquisition/UTM Term, Acquisition/UTM Content, Acquisition/Channel, Acquisition/Referring URL, or Acquisition/Embed Source. All eight are available as native segment conditions. See Segment condition charts, use cases, and examples for the full operator list.

If you previously saw "boost" as an acquisition channel, that label has been renamed to "recommendations." This is a naming change only, not a data change. Refer to Boosts to paid recommendations: what changed for the full rename.

UTM tracking works reliably for free signups. However, when someone converts to a paid subscription directly through beehiiv's built-in Stripe checkout (for example, by clicking through to your /upgrade page), the acquisition source may show as "direct/(none)" instead of preserving the original UTM data from their initial visit. This means if a visitor arrives from a paid ad campaign but upgrades to paid immediately without first signing up for free, the original campaign attribution may not carry through to their paid subscription record.

If accurate paid conversion attribution is critical to your workflow, consider using a signup flow that captures the free signup first (preserving the UTM data), then redirects to your upgrade page as a second step, or use external tracking pixels to track conversions independently. For more on tracking pixels, read Setting up tracking pixels for your website.